15.
Lynch/lynching. Most
people know “lynch” to mean the extra-judicial murder, often by hanging,
carried out by a gang of people. Over the years, hanging has ceased to be an
intrinsic element in the conception of lynching. Any mob justice, even if it does
not involve hanging, is now regarded as lynching, as in: the mob lynched the
alleged witch in the market square.

In fact, in popular usage, lynching has now been
figuratively extended to mean unfair public attacks on a person’s character.
That was the sense of the term Black American Supreme Court Justice Clarence
Thomas had in mind when he accused the American media of engaging in “high-tech lynching” for having a feeding frenzy on his past sexual misconduct during the confirmation hearings of his Supreme Court nomination in the US Senate in 1991. A person who takes part in
lynching is a lyncher, and a group of people intent on lynching somebody is
called a lynch mob.

The etymology of this terrible word is shrouded in
controversy, but no one doubts that it is an eponymous word derived from the
name of a person whose last or middle name was Lynch.

The first person from whose name the word is thought
to be derived is an Irish man by the name of James Lynch Fitzstephen, who was
the mayor of the city of Galway in the 1490s. History records that in 1493, he
extra-judicially hanged his own son whom he found guilty of killing a Spanish
visitor to Galway. I am dubious that the current usage of the word “lynch” owes
any debt toJames Lynch Fitzstephen’s murder of his son.

Other sources
say the word owes its origins to one Capt. William Lynch who wrote “Lynch’s
Law,” defined by Alphadictionary.com as “an agreement with the Virginia General
Assembly in 1782 that allowed Lynch to capture and punish criminals in
Pittsylvania County [in the United States] without trial due to the lack of
courts in that county.” But this etymology, though popular, is disputed.

Capt. William Lynch

There are at least two other contenders. Many
American historians say the term Lynch law—from which “lynch” or “lynching” are
derived—is traceable to one Charles Lynch who lived in the US state of Virginia
from 1736 to 1796, that is, three decades before Capt. William Lynch was born.
Charles Lynch was said to have appointed himself head of an extra-legal gang of
people who summarily executed people that were loyal to British forces during
the American Revolutionary War.

Charles Lynch

Some people trace the origin of “lynch” to an
apocryphal letter, wildly popular in African-American circles, supposedly
written by a William (or Willie) Lynch, which gave slave owners advice on how
to control their slaves by keeping them divided among themselves. The letter has been
found to be a hoax.

Whatever it is, lynch, lynching—and the word’s many
collocations—didn’t become standard entries in English dictionaries until the
1850s.

16.
Macadamize/macadamization. This is the word that inspired
this series. Macadamize, as I wrote in the first installment of this series, is
a grander, less familiar word for tar, as in: The government has budgeted
billions to grade and macadamize hundreds of roads this year. The noun form of
the word is macadam, which is the bigger word for “coal tar” or “tarmac.” The
word owes its existence to John Loudon McAdam, a Scottish engineer and
road-builder who lived from 1756 to 1836. According to Alphadictionary, MacAdam
was the first to propose “compacted crushed stone as a road covering.” In other
words, he is the father of modern road construction. The word “tarmac” is also
partly derived from his name; it is a blend of “tar” and “MacAdam.”

John Loudon McAdam

17.
Maverick. I’ve noticed an interesting difference in the way
this word is used in Nigerian and American English. In Nigeria, the word
usually means a rebel, a renegade, or an unorthodox person, which is a
legitimate meaning of the word. For instance, the Nigerian media habitually
called former Biafran leader Chukwuemeka Ojukwu a maverick, and there is often
a mild tone of disapproval in the description. In America, however, “maverick”
has no negative associations. It’s often used to denote an independent-minded person;
a person who is not held in check by group think or by a predetermined ideology.

During the
2008 American presidential election, Republican candidate John McCain and his
running mate Sarah Palin never missed a chance to tell the American people that
they were “mavericks.” Their excessive use of “maverick” to describe themselves
caused the media to invent a jocular adjectival form of the word: mavericky. I love that invention.

Well, “maverick” is derived from a Texas cattleman and lawyer by the name of Samuel Augustus Maverick who was born in 1803 and died in 1870. In
Maverick’s time, cattle owners often burned their cows with a branding iron to
indicate ownership of their cows. But Maverick thought branding was cruel
and refused to brand his cows. So when cows strayed and mixed up, people
who branded their cows easily recognized theirs. Since Maverick didn’t brand his
own cows, other cattlemen automatically knew that the unbranded cattle were
his. They called the unbranded cows “Maverick’s” and handed them over to him.

Samuel Augustus Maverick

The meaning
of the word evolved from unbranded cows in Texas to stubborn independence,
independence here referring to Maverick’s decision to buck a common practice by
his peers.

18.
Mesmerize/Mesmerism. To mesmerize is to, as
Alphadictionary.com says, “fascinate someone to the point that they seem to be
in a trance; to hypnotize.” This popular English verb came to the language from
the last name of a German medical doctor by the name of Franz Anton Mesmer who
lived from 1734 to 1815. He invented the science “animal magnetism,” through
which he induced his patients into a sleep-like state, which made them
susceptible to do anything he instructed them to do. That practice came to be
known as mesmerism. A person who induces mesmerism is called a mesmerizer or a
mesmerist. A Scottish medical doctor by the name of James Braid (1795-1860) who
studied Mesmer’s methods later renamed mesmerism “hypnotism.”

Franz Anton Mesmer

19.
Nicotine. This name for the “poisonous addictive chemical in
tobacco smoke” is derived from Jean Nicot (1530-1600), a French diplomat,
scholar, and lexicographer who introduced tobacco to France from Portugal where
he served as French ambassador in the mid-16th century. Nicot
believed tobacco had medical properties and actively advocated its use in the
French society, particularly among the French elite. He became wildly popular
in France in his time as a result of the acceptance of tobacco by the French nobility.
The tobacco plant nicotiana is also named after him.

Jean Nicot

Apart from being a tobacco enthusiast, Nicot also
had the distinction of compiling one of the earliest dictionaries in the French
language.

20.
Nosey parker (also spelled nosy parker). This chiefly British
English work for a busybody, that is, a person who intrudes into other people’s
business, is derived from “Matthew
Parker (1504-1575), Archbishop of Canterbury from 1559-1575, who developed a
reputation for sticking his nose in other people's business,” according to
Alphadictionary.

Subscribe To This Blog by Email

My Blog Followers

About Me

Dr. Farooq Kperogi is a professor, journalist, newspaper columnist, author, and blogger based in Greater Atlanta, USA. He received his Ph.D. in communication from Georgia State University's Department of Communication where he taught journalism for 5 years and won the top Ph.D. student prize called the "Outstanding Academic Achievement in Graduate Studies Award." He earned his Master of Science degree in communication (with a minor in English) from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and won the Outstanding Master's Student in Communication Award.

He earned his B.A. in Mass Communication (with minors in English and Political Science) from Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria, where he won the Nigerian Television Authority Prize for the Best Graduating Student.

Dr. Kperogi worked as a reporter and news editor, as a researcher/speech writer at the (Nigerian) President's office, and as a journalism lecturer at Kaduna Polytechnic and Ahmadu Bello University before relocating to the United States.

He was the Managing Editor of the Atlanta Review of Journalism History, a refereed academic journal. He was also Associate Director of Research at Georgia State University's Center for International Media Education (CIME).

He is currently an Associate Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media at the School of Communication and Media, Kennesaw State University, Georgia's fastest-growing and third largest university. (Kennesaw is a suburb of Atlanta). For more than 13 years, he wrote two weekly newspaper columns: "Notes From Atlanta" in the Abuja-based DailyTrust on Saturday (formerly Weekly Trust) and "Politics of Grammar" in the DailyTrust on Sunday (formerly Sunday Trust). From November 2018, his political commentaries appear on the back page of the Nigerian Tribune on Saturday.In April 2014, Dr. Kperogi was honored as the Outstanding Alumnus of the University of Louisiana's Department of Communication. His research has also won international awards, such as the 2016 Top-Rated Research Paper Award at the 17th Symposium on Online Journalism at the University of Texas, Austin, USA.